We woke up this morning and Sarah’s wrist was still in rough shape. She could wiggle her fingers a little more than yesterday, but she still couldn’t rotate her wrist easily and it hurt a lot to put any pressure on it. On her bike with her right hand incapacitated, she would only be able to use her front brake, so rather than risk another fall, we decided to take a bus the remaining 79 kilometers to Luang Prabang.

We spent the morning waiting for a bus outside our guesthouse and around 11am an open-air minibus pulled up and we secured a ride to Luang Prabang for 80,000 kip (~US$8.00). Our bikes were tied up on top and we were loaded onto the side-facing benches with the other locals. The fact that we were facing the side combined with the twisty mountain road made for an extremely sickening ride. After about 20 minutes, we each took some Dramamine to prevent ourselves from puking. Here is Sarah at one of the stops with her barf-bag ready.

As we neared the city, the road flattened out and we were dropped off at the bus terminal about 5 kilometers outside the city center. While loading up our bikes, we met a couple of Australian bicycle tourists who led us to into the city. Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World Heritage City which means that the entire city is full of quiet, car-free streets, gorgeous wats, and beautiful French colonial architecture. We found a quiet guesthouse with a secluded courtyard for 70,000 kip (~US$7.00).

We are going to rest here for a couple days at least to gauge how quickly Sarah’s wrist recovers.

Phou Khun to Kia Kou Cham
50.33km, 5:17:38, 9.5km/hr

We didn’t get the good weather we were hoping for this morning. We set the alarm for 6am but were woken up not by the ringing of the alarm, but by pounding rain on the metal roof of our guesthouse. We dragged ourselves out of bed and had a breakfast of noodle soup, strong coffee, and green tea. Luckily during breakfast, the rain stopped and after packing up our gear we were on the road by 7:30am. The day started with a short climb and then we were cycling up and down along the ridgelines of the lush mountains. The rain and clouds were so thick visibility was close to zero and I was pretty disheartened that we were missing out on the views.

We had only been riding for 6 kilometers when we had our first accident. We were on a descent and the road was wet and slick. Sarah was in front of me and all of the sudden she locked up her wheels and started to skid. She lost control of her bike and hit the deck. I was too close behind her to swerve out of the way and I flipped right over her. I landed on my back and wasn’t hurt, so I quickly got up and started dragging our bikes and gear off to the side of the road where Sarah was huddled. We got everything into the ditch and assessed the damage. Sarah was pretty shaken up and started to cry. Luckily, we were going pretty slow and there were no cars on the road around us at the time we went down. At first, we thought we had both escaped without any major injuries but then we realized that Sarah’s wrist was sore and was starting to swell up. She could still rotate it and wiggle her fingers, but we weren’t sure if it was broken or sprained. We decided our best option was to keep riding towards Luang Prabang and see how her wrist felt later in the day before deciding what to do.

We still had a lot of climbing and descending to do, which was a problem because now Sarah couldn’t use her rear brake with her right hand and she was also freaked out about falling again. We tried to go slow, but on the next 10% grade descent, Sarah locked up her front wheel again and went down sliding on the wet road again! I heard her go down behind me and tried to stop too fast and before I knew it I was sprawled out on the tarmac too! When we picked our bikes up off the road for the second time we almost fell down again immediately. The wet surface of the road was so slippery that we could barely walk on it! What was wrong with us today? It was like we had forgotten how to ride our bikes! After the second fall, we walked our bikes down the steep descents when the road was wet.

It rained off and on today and it was a strange feeling dreading the descents and looking forward to the climbs where we could feel safe that we would stay upright. When it was clear, the views were beautiful.

We arrived in the small village of Kia Kou Cham around 2pm and were both starving so we lunched on fried rice with pork, fried noodles with egg and vegetables, and stir-fried mixed vegetables. The vegetables here are grassy, leafy greens that you see growing all over the side of the road. The scenes in the Hmong villages were very interesting again today. We saw dirty children hauling giant buckets of water, two women working a giant mortar and pestle that was about three feet high, a woman chopping up a pile of ginger root that was taller than she was, a child throwing a temper tantrum by lying in the middle of the highway while her grandma looked on and chuckled, and lots of village men and women bathing nude in the center of the village.

After lunch, the restaurant owner asked us if we wanted to sleep at her guesthouse and showed us the rooms. They were simple and clean, so we took one and she gave us some hot water to use in the Thai-style bucket shower. That made it much easier to scrub the dirt out of our road rash. After getting cleaned up, we asked the woman if she knew where we could get ice. We wanted to follow the R.I.C.E. treatment for Sarah’s injured wrist. The woman didn’t have it, but said that in Laos they use hot water to treat injuries. She gave Sarah a bottle of hot water and we bought some cold water bottles to use as an ice substitute.

We plan to get up at six tomorrow and see how Sarah’s wrist feels and make a decision on what we are going to do.

Kasi to Phou Khun
44.89km, 5:04:01, 8.8km/hr

We woke up fifteen minutes earlier than usual today. Normally I wouldn’t be too happy about that, but today we were going to have bread and cheese for breakfast instead of riding on an empty stomach like we usually do. It turned out to be a bust though because the bread was spongy and to top it off it was infested with ants. We have become so used to ants in food here in Laos that we picked as many off as we could and ate it anyway.

We basically just grinded up the mountains all day and enjoyed the views. The first 8 kilometers were flat, and then the next thirty kilometers were a constant climb into the mountains. We climbed at a steady pace for 4 hours and topped out at 1500 meters. I went slow to stay with Sarah because I didn’t want to get too far ahead of her on such a long climb. Our average climbing speed is 6-7 km/hr. At the lower elevations, the hills were entirely covered with corn. It was amazing how steep the slopes were that had corn planted on them. There was a thick cloud cover the entire day, so we couldn’t see all the mountains, but the clouds did keep us cool. I was a little depressed at first that we weren’t going to get to see the mountain tops, but I think we got the idea. I wonder if it is pretty rare to have no clouds up here anyway.

We went through half a dozen Hmong villages where the kids usually went nuts greeting us and the adults were very friendly too. One strange thing we saw was a lot of kids with blonde hair, but no adults. We also saw a lot of young men carrying AK-47s around. I’m not sure if they were with the government and fighting Hmong people or if it was the other way around. Some people were wearing one piece of the traditional dress like pants, a vest, or a head-wrap, but no one was in the full garb. The kids were usually filthy.

We also saw a young boy playing guitar in front of his house, which was on top of a big hill overlooking the valley. There were steep stairs cut into the dirt leading up to the front door. We stopped to listen for a while and then gave him a round of applause before taking off.

More mountain views from the ride:

We arrived in Phou Khun around noon and had lunch of noodle soup. We thought about going on to Kia Kou Cham, which was 50 kilometers down the road, but then the weather took a turn for the worse and it was so cloudy you couldn’t see anything so we decided to wait until tomorrow and hope for better weather. Our room was basic: cement floor, no running water, and a shared squat toilet. We dubbed our room “Cell Block Five”.

We both took “showers” in the bathroom. It was already pretty cold outside (like a wet day in Seattle in February), but we had to dump ice-cold rainwater on ourselves from a giant bucket, soap up, and then rinse off. Sarah just rinsed off, but I did the whole shebang. After the initial shock it wasn’t too bad.

We then spent the evening hanging out on the guesthouse balcony and watching people below. Every time a bus pulled up, the women selling vegetables would run after it and try to sell something that looked like leafy grass to the passengers. There were a bunch of little girls selling corn too. It is sad to see the kids working, but they looked like they were having fun.

Vang Vieng to Kasi
58.87km, 4:08:49, 14.2km/hr

We set our alarm and woke up early today at 5:30am. It is always a pain getting up early after taking a day off. When we don’t ride, we sleep in until 8 or 9 and getting up to ride the next day is never fun. Our hotel in Vang Vieng had free coffee (Nescafe) and breakfast (cookies), so we each had a cup before we set off. When we checked out of the hotel, the price of our room changed from $8 to $9. We’re not sure if the guy who checked us in forgot to write down the price we bargained for, or if the plan was to charge us $9 the whole time. We bickered for a bit but then ended up paying $9. We’ll have to remember to get the price in writing in the future.

Today was a rare day where it was actually raining when we left in the morning; usually the rain comes in the late afternoon or evening. It was relatively flat leaving Vang Vieng and to our west we had huge karst formations draped in mist and clouds. It was some of the most beautiful scenery we have seen on our trip and it was impossible to photograph.

There were several river crossings early in the ride and we saw a Lao man fishing with a cantilever net. Normally I don’t take many pictures of people. The children who eagerly greet us in the villages seem to like having their picture taken, but I am more hesitant to take a picture of man or woman going about his or her daily activity. It makes me feel like I am treating the people like zoo animals. Sometimes you miss great pictures though; today I saw a family of waterbuffalo huddled together under someone’s house on stilts. I wish I would have taken a picture of that. This Lao man didn’t seem to mind the photos and we watched him for several minutes. He seemed to be watching the flowing river for fish and would pull up the net when he thought he had one. The river was so muddy, I’m not sure how he could see anything. We saw him pull up the net three times and he caught one small fish.

Right after crossing this river, we stopped for breakfast of foe, the Lao equivalent of Vietnamese pho. It is pretty much the same thing, except the broth doesn’t have as much of a cinnamon flavor. I like mine with a lot of lemon squeezed in. Today our soup had beef and then a type of sausage that tasted a little like liverwurst. Not surprisingly, Sarah didn’t touch any of the meat. She has resorted to trying to get all of her protein from soy milk. Good luck with that honey!

Every time we ride through these herds of cattle on the road, I have an overpowering desire to slap one of them on the ass. I imagine it would be like slapping an enormous rump roast. I’m not sure of the reaction I would get though.

As it got later and later in the day and the clouds didn’t burn off, we began to get worried that we were going to miss out on all the spectacular mountain views. Eventually it did clear up, but I don’t think it mattered anyway because once the dramatic karst peaks were behind us the terrain flattened out and we passed through many hillsides where villagers where growing large fields of corn.

We had some decently long climbs today but the steep sections were short, so it didn’t feel very tough. Out of ten, I gave it a four and Sarah gave it a five. The 57 kilometers went by very fast: probably due to the scenery. About a kilometer before Kasi, we stopped and had lunch at a roadside restaurant. The young girl whose family owned the restaurant spoke a little English, but we used our guidebook to order in Lao. First we tried fried rice. They didn’t have it. Our next request was steamed rice and vegetables, but that too they couldn’t make. She told us they had soup, but since we had that for breakfast it didn’t sound too appetizing. After a couple of seconds of deliberation, we fell back to our old standby of an omelette and sticky rice. It’s simple, tastes good, and reminds us of the breakfasts we used to eat in Thailand. During lunch, a couple of chickens ran into the restaurant and caused a ruckus as they knocked over some pots and the girl chased them out. Afterwards, she said “Sorry!” about three times. I’m not sure what she was sorry about though. With all the loose farm animals living amongst people around here, I wouldn’t have been surprised if a pig walked into the restaurant to order some noodles.

We rode into Kasi and found a room in a guesthouse for $5. There are actually only two guesthouses in the town so we didn’t have much of an option. On the other hand, there are half a dozen of restaurants catering to all the buses that stop in Kasi on the way to Luang Prabang. We followed our usual afternoon routine of showering, reading, and resting until about 4:30. Then we headed out to the market to get some fruit and snacks. Kasi has a really small market and the fruit selection was pretty pathetic. We purchased some rambutans and bananas. Watermelon is by far our favorite fruit here in the tropics, but for some reason some towns have it and some towns don’t. No one in Kasi likes watermelons? I just don’t get it.

We also looked around for cookies and crackers, but couldn’t find anything. It’s hard to shop here. The shops are small and dark and the owner usually is either sleeping on the floor inside or else is awake and will follow you around the store looking at everything with you and suggesting you purchase certain things buy shoving them directly in your face. I don’t think the notion of “customer service” exists here.

After dinner we bought some snacks for tomorrow. I don’t know why there are rumors that there is overcharging in some of these southeast Asia countries but not others; it exists everywhere. Laos has official price-tiering for foreigners on some services like bus fares. How could you not expect the business owners to follow suit and tier their prices too? The easiest way to detect it is when purchasing water. We always purchase the same six pack of generic water that they have in every country here. In Laos, I have been charged 5000 kip and 6000 kip and twice people have tried to charge me 10000 kip. Double the going rate! The depressing thing is that when they try to charge you 10000, it is impossible to get them down to 5000 or 6000. They probably figure they can just sell the water to the next sucker on the bus for 10000. Once I got the person down to 8000 and today I got her down to 7000 only after we bribed her by telling her we would by two expensive ice cream bars as well. We also bought bread and cheese for the morning: a bit of an upgrade from our prison rations.

We’ve arrived in Vang Vieng after two days riding north from Vientiane.

Yesterday we rode a flat 70 kilometers to Phonhong and stayed in a hovel where the room came with a free pair of women’s underwear hanging in the bathroom. Sarah joked that it was an air-freshener, but the fact that there were also several phone numbers scribbled on the wall made us pretty sure we were staying in a brothel. The only visitor we had all night though was a little boy who opened the door, yelled “Hello”, and ran off. It must have been a dare from his friends.

Today’s ride was a lot hillier, but still not mountainous. We woke up early and ate our prison rations of bread and water before setting off. Like a true prisoner, Sarah saved a small piece of bread for later. She wasn’t going to eat it herself though. The entire time we have been cycling in Asia, Sarah has been dying to pet the livestock on the road. It’s a little known fact that Sarah has an addiction to petting zoos. Riding through these rural areas where the farm animals roam free has been a giant tease for her. Today she decided to try to lure the cute little things to her with food. It didn’t work though. Both the cows and the goats she tried to befriend shied away from her. Maybe she’ll have better luck with the ducks.

It is amazing how rustic life is here. Today we saw men making baskets by hand and women weaving cloth on handlooms. There are also two popular games people play during the day here in Laos. One looks a lot like bocce ball, and the other is like volleyball, but you are not allowed to use your hands: only your head and feet.

After 75 kilometers, we crossed a river and entered the Vang Vieng district. The river was full of people fishing with nets and poles. We stopped to watch for a few minutes but no one caught anything. It must have been productive though because the storefronts in the little town on the river were full of dried fish products.

After that, it was a flat 10 kilometers to the town of Vang Vieng. The town is right on the Nam Song river and is surrounded by a striking karst landscape. It really is beautiful. Vang Vieng is also a very popular backpackers hangout. This is the town you may have heard of where all the cafes play Friends and The Simpsons 24 hours a day. Ugh!

We plan to rest and enjoy the scenery in Vang Vieng for one day and then start the real climbing to Luang Prabang.

It wasn’t easy, but we’ve made it to Vientiane, the capital city of Laos. Or as the backpackers like to call it in an attempt to seem really clued-in: Lao.

We spent one very fun evening in Savannakhet before hopping on the bus for the 400km ride to Vientiane. We took the bus to Vientiane because we have a one-month visa for Laos and didn’t think we could ride all the distance we have to cover. Savannakhet to Vientiane seemed like the most boring stretch: very flat along the Mekong with the same scenery or rice paddies that we have seen everywhere. In Savannakhet we met a woman from New Zealand who is on a 2 year assignment as a public health nurse here. It turns out that we actually rode our bikes right past her house outside of Picton, New Zealand! She brought us to a floating restaurant on the Mekong for dinner where we ate delicious fish and had a great time chatting with her. She’s traveled all over the world working as a nurse (in Nepal and the Arctic Circle!), does long distance mountain bike tours, jumps into rivers to cool off, and is a truly adventurous person. She reminded me of Anne Mustoe. After dinner we all took a short evening bike ride around the city to see the sights. We were both glad to have the chance to hang out with her – what an impressive and interesting person!

Here we are riding to dinner together:

The next day was not so good. We got on the 7:30am bus to Vientiane. We traveled only 400km but it took 8 hours. The bus had air-conditioning, but the driver refused to use it. The temperature was at a steady 95 for the entire 8 hours. We were sitting in pools of our own sweat on the vinyl seats; I developed a case of heat rash on my butt to complement the saddles sores I’ve begun to develop. I had a headache from lack of water and last but not least, people began throwing up into their handkerchiefs by the end of the trip. Jamie almost got hit by the woman behind him as we were filing off the bus. This is the type of experience that makes us really appreciate the fact that we’re traveling by bicycle and not bus! This was the first bus ride where we didn’t have to pay for our bicycles. We think one of the workers may have been trying to get some money from us, but he didn’t speak any English and gave up quickly when he realized we didn’t understand him. At the first stop, he called Jamie out of the bus and over to the ticket office. There, the ticket worker tried to talk to Jamie, but what he said was “How many cigarettes? How much does it cost?” Jamie stared at him trying to figure out what was going on and the guy then said “One cigarette, 40,000. Two cigarettes, 70,000.” Jamie was bewildered and said “Cigarettes or bicycles?” but no one seemed to understand and everyone left us alone after that.

Vientiane is a very nice city and wonderful for biking – nice wide streets and not much traffic at all. We were starting to get sick of noodle soup, so we’ve really been the variety of food available here. We’ve had really good Indian food, pizza, and croissants with lattes and free wi-fi in the morning. Heaven!

Riding into town. There’s a rumor that this arch was created out of cement that the US government donated to Laos so it could build an aircraft runway. Laos built the arch instead:

Not everything is running perfectly though; we got to exercise our problem solving skills yesterday. There are no ATMs in Laos other than the one here in Vientiane so we need to withdraw enough money to ride through the entire country and into China. We have about 20 days of riding in Laos ahead of us, plus possibly 10 more days in China to reach the first ATM where we can restock our cash supplies. At $35 per day (our average) plus a little padding for emergencies, that is a little over $1,000. Ideally we want that money in US Dollars rather than Laos kip because (1) A thousand dollars in kip would be a stack of money literally 10″ high and (2) you can’t exchange kip outside of the country and even inside the country the currency fluctuates a lot and we could easily get screwed somewhere along the line.

Jamie lied awake all night worrying about this and, as usual, got annoyed with me that I wasn’t worrying with him. I told him that worrying while lying in bed wasn’t going to do any good and we’d just have to research it tomorrow and figure out a solution. This is how he has earned the name Mr. Doomsday; you may also remember that he exhibited similar behavior within the Suicide King journal entry.

So, we have the money we need in our US bank account; the problem is getting our hands on the actual cash we need from here. First we tried to go to the bank to see if there was some way to use the Laos bank to withdraw money from our US bank account. Nope; the only option there was to get a cash advance on our credit card which we’d have to pay a 20-25% interest fee on immediately. That’s $250 on $1000 – yikes! Next we went to the Western Union office; we’d heard you can wire money to yourself. It was difficult to explain what we were trying to do to the Western Union guy and in the end he told us we could only wire money to ourselves if we had cash. We laughed. If we had cash we wouldn’t need to wire money at all! Then we had the brilliant idea of going to an internet cafe and using the Western Union website to wire money to ourselves. They website allows you to enter a credit/debit card number – perfect! But alas, it did not work. We got an error code but weren’t sure what it meant so we tried changing all sorts of variables in our online request. Maybe you can’t send money from James Welle to James Welle? So we had James Welle send money to Sarah Erck. That didn’t work. Maybe there was a problem with our primary bank account, so we used our back up bank card? That didn’t work either. This went on for over an hour when we finally decided to give up. Our current theory is you can’t wire money into Laos using a credit card; you have to use cash.

We were feeling pretty depressed at this point, thinking we’d be forced into doing the cash advance and paying a 25% premium. We went to eat lunch and talk it over. After lunch we decided to stop by the ATM to see how much money it would allow us to withdraw in one day. We figured that carrying around gigantic stacks of kip would probably be better than paying $250 for the privilege of US dollars. The limit was $300 per day which Jamie went ahead and withdrew. At that rate we’d have to hang around here in Vientiane for four days to get enough money which is bad news because we have a lot of miles to cover before our Laos visa runs out. Not really thinking it’d work, we tried my ATM card which is hooked up to the exact same account as Jamie’s. Amazingly enough, it allowed me to withdraw $300 too – hurray! That cuts our Vientiane time down to only two days to get enough money. We were dancing with joy on the street beside the ATM as we realized that we wouldn’t have to pay a $250 fee for a cash advance. Then we realized we had $600 in cash on us and we were looking much to happy while lurking around an ATM, so we hopped on our bikes and took off to our hotel to hide the money before we became targets for some sort of armed robbery scheme.

Here are our wads of cash!

Tomorrow we head north towards Luang Prabang. This area of Laos is supposed to be extremely hilly and beautiful. We have met many cyclists who have said it is the highlight of Southeast Asia. Stay tuned for pictures!

Vietnam to Laos wins the prize for the most entertaining border crossing yet. The day started off badly. We woke up early so we’d have time to eat the buffet breakfast at the hotel next door to ours before riding across the border. We walked in, surveyed the meager buffet, and asked how much it was. The four employees conferred amongst themselves and then said “I sorry, this buffet only for hotel customers.” I will admit now that the buffet didn’t look that great but it did have eggs and the bizarre perfectly white, perfectly square pieces of “bread” that are used for toast here. I was sick and tired of eating noodle soup for 2-3 meals per day and was ridiculously excited for a piece of toast. So I asked, “Do you have a menu? Do you have any food at all that we can order?” I was met with poker-faced blank stares which infuriated me at that early hour. The previous night we’d tried to get a room in this same hotel and they’d told us they were full, which I still find hard to believe. I think they just hate sweaty cyclists. I was getting ready to start a fight over the buffet when Jamie took my arm and dragged me out. We ate noodle soup for breakfast instead.

The border was only one kilometer from our hotel so after breakfast we got there in no time. As we approached the first border gate we were swarmed by a mob of money changing girls. Jamie was drawn in by their chatty eagerness and began discussing exchange rates. We had about US$200 which we’d need to get us through the 600 kilometers to Laos’s sole ATM in Vientiane. Because we had a decently large amount of money, Jamie figured we’d be able to negotiate for a good exchange rate. We got one girl to agree to 9,500 kip to 1 US dollar (the current official rate is 9,600), which is basically as good as the rate we’d get at a bank so we decided to throw caution to the wind and change money. We turned over our Vietnamese dong and chaos ensued. The girls worked themselves (and Jamie) into a frenzy with their calculators, pads of paper, pens, and gigantic wads of money. They were all talking over each other, louder and louder, crowding closer and closer to Jamie. I was standing back laughing hysterically but also trying to keep an eye on all his stuff to make sure no one tried to swipe anything. Here’s one picture; I love the expression on the girl’s face to the far right. She’s probably saying “Sucker!” to her friends. Our selected money changing girl is the one in the bright orange sweatshirt. Later on it became fortunate that she was wearing such a distinctive outfit…

Our girl counted out the 1.7 million Lao kip that was our due. She counted it, her friends counted it, they passed it all around and punched their calculators furiously, Jamie grabbed it and counted it and tried to impose order on chaos: “OK this is ONE million. Now where’s the 700,000?!” More counting, more calculating, more grabbing. We finally got it all straightened out, said thank you to our girl, and got ready to cross the border. Here’s a scene from the final moments of money changing. Note that everyone is crowding around closer and closer as Jamie demonstrates his skills on their calculator:

We decided that we’d each count the money one more time because borders are infamous for rip-offs and the numbers we were dealing with were so huge that we knew it’d be easy to make a mistake. Turns out that we’d gotten 1,072,000 instead of the 1,720,000 that we were supposed to have which is a rip-off of over $60 US dollars! We looked at each other with shock and dread – we’d just been had by a bunch of giggling, pink-hatted, glittery-fingernailed girls! Jamie said “Should we try to find her?” and I roared “YES! What was she wearing?!”

The orange shirt came in handy as I raced towards the group of girls about 50 ft away; I was able to identify her immediately. The girls weren’t sure what I was after. They eagerly moved towards me and said “Change money? Change money?!” I said “Yessss…sure…” and lured them closer. At this point orange-shirt realized what was going on and she tried to slink away and hide behind a nearby semi-truck. I charged after her, plowing my bike through a sea of people, and yelled “Hey you! Come back here!” At this point Jamie realized I’d successfully apprehended the suspect and came over to join me in my confrontation with orange-shirt. We told her she owned us money, and she meekly agreed which surprised us. Then she smiled, shook her head, batted her eyelashes, and said in a sing-song voice, “I sorrrry! I don’t know!” For some reason this actually worked on Jamie and he smiled and practically patted her on the head and gave her a hug while saying, “That’s OK”. Anyhow, after more rounds of furious counting and calculating (we had to forcibly grab our wad of Vietnamese dong back out of her hand more than a few times in order to get things going again), we got the correct sum of money. The strangest thing was that after we had gotten our Lao kip, the girls were either glaring at us or making pouty faces like we had ripped them off! They even asked for some of our dong as a souvenir. We just laughed, said our goodbyes, and crossed the border into Laos with no further incidents.

The landscape immediately on the other side of the border in Laos is similar to Vietnam, but the people are much more poor; most live in thatched shacks and most of the children are completely naked. When we pass through villages, groups of kids run hysterically through their yards to scream “Hello” or “Bye Bye” at us. There are lots of people out working in the rice paddies; the green color of the rice is so bright that it looks fake:

The road was extremely smooth and there was hardly any traffic at all. The only downside was that when a vehicle did pass, it was a smelly, polluting truck. It is not fun to ride through a cloud of black soot.

We had a fairly stiff headwind for much of first day, but it was really cloudy and we even got rained on a little bit which was great. It is so much better to ride in the rain than to feel like your skin is being roasted to a crisp. I was drafting closely behind Jamie to stay out of the headwind when I bumped my wheel into his, lost control of my bike, and crashed right into the middle of the highway. I was sort of dazed at first and then the only thing I could think of was that I had to get off the highway as quickly as possible. I scrabbled over to the side of the road, dragging my bike, and assessed the damage. I’d landed on my leg and the side of my head. Luckily I’d been smart enough not to put my arm out to catch myself – that’s how I broke it last time! My knee and thigh were scraped up and bruised, but my head and face were fine because the helmet had shielded them. My right brake was bent in at an odd angle, but Jamie was able to straighten it out. Overall I escaped with minimal damage and felt fine, so we rode on to our final destination.

We arrived at Muang Phin and learned at our hotel that the town didn’t have electricity until 5pm; our guidebook makes it sounds like this is typical for rural Laos. We rode around town looking for a place to have dinner and didn’t find much. We ended up with an extremely fishy tasting papaya salad and some noodle soup full of random (non-refrigerated) pig parts. This is almost exactly how our first dinner in Cambodia turned out; we are hoping the food situation here isn’t as dire as it was there!

The next two days went smoothly and after a couple of days of cycling in Laos, we understood why everyone says it is so peaceful here. The road is extremely smooth and quiet. Traffic varies from light to nonexistent. Every once in a while you get passed by a logging truck (carrying teak we guess?), but mostly you just ride along listening to the bugs and watching people working the rice paddies.

The other thing we noticed in Laos right away is that goats have replaced cows as the livestock of choice. They are everywhere!

We haven’t seen goat on any restaurant menus, but one new thing we did get to eat is sticky rice. It is a staple of the Lao diet and in the morning you see old women delivering it to their customers in wicker baskets. You just pull a clump out of the basket, roll it up with your fingers, and dip it into your food. Delicious! Surprisingly, food is more expensive here than in Vietnam. The price of a cup of coffee went up from US$0.25 to US$0.50 and a bowl of noodle soup now costs US$1 instead of US$0.50.

Today we arrived in Savannakhet and tomorrow we will probably take a bus north to Vientiane. Then we will start riding north through the mountains toward China.

Our last two days in Vietnam were full of more rip-offs than all the other days there combined. We cycled north on Highway 14 as far as Thanh My (Nam Giang). We were originally planning on riding to Ta Lu (Hien), but when we arrived at Thanh My at 11am and temperatures were approaching 40 degrees Celsius, we decided to start looking for a bus. Some locals also told us that the road to Thanh My was extremely steep with some long climbs, so that cemented our decision and we stopped at a cafe to ask if they knew of any buses to Ta Lu. Its always a struggle to get information on buses here. You always get mixed information and the bikes make things even more complicated. After some discussion, the cafe owner (who spoke some English) told us there were no buses to Ta Lu, but that she would help us flag down a bus to Da Nang. Da Nang is on the coast and in the opposite direction from the way we wanted to go, but from there we could catch a bus to Lao Bao on the border. We ordered a couple of coffees and ended up waiting in the cafe for three hours while the owner made a couple of half-hearted attempts to flag down passing minibuses. It became pretty obvious that we were never going to get on a bus that way, so Sarah went to the other side of the road where a couple of women were waiting to try to flag down a bus herself. I was still sitting the cafe and I heard one of the customers say “bicycle” in Vietnamese and “ten dollars” and then everyone started laughing and looking at me. Looking back, this must have translated as “Screw these guys. I’m gonna help these foreigners get on a bus and make some money in the process!” He then went over to the other side of the road to wait with Sarah and the women. I had a hunch he was going to rip us off, so I gave him a Marlboro as a peace offering, but it didn’t work. After a couple of minutes, an empty minibus approached and we waved it down. There was some discussion in Vietnamese and then the back hatch was popped and we started to load our bikes into the van. After everything was loaded, we started to get into the van and everyone started yelling that we had to pay. I first offered 200000 dong (~US$12.5), which was wait we had paid for our last bus ride. This was refused and there were more yells of “ten dollars” so I offered 160000 dong (~US$10), but this was refused too. It became clear they wanted US$20. We were low on dong and I didn’t even have that much anymore, but luckily I did have one twenty dollar bill stashed away. It was accepted after some examination of its validity. Now, you know you are getting ripped off when everyone in the immediate vicinity of you, including random customers at the cafe, take a cut of the money you just paid for the bus fare. After the divvying up, we were on our way to Da Nang. I was up front with the driver and Sarah was in the back with the women. When they didn’t pay for the ride, we realized we had paid their fare too, but we didn’t mind too much as they were really friendly. They were extremely interested in Sarah’s tan lines and one of them was petting Sarah’s helmet while saying “beautiful.”

After about two hours, we arrived in Da Nang and checked into a hotel. We then set off to figure out how to get a bus to Lao Bao. We went to a local tour company to try to get some information and the guy tried to rip us off three different ways. First he told us that it was too dangerous to bicycle in Laos and that we should take his bus all the way to Savannakhet, but we just stonewalled him on that one. Then he changed tack and told us he could get us to Lao Bao but we would have to either spend a night in Hue or Dong Ha. We told him that was not an option for us so he then made a couple of phone calls and finally told us that we could get to Lao Bao tomorrow by taking two air-conditioned, tourist-class buses with a switchover in Hue for US$46. That sounded pretty steep and we were getting sick of his conniving, so we decided to roll the dice and try our luck at the public bus station the next morning. Even as we were leaving, this guy didn’t give up. He told us he could “help” us find a bus tomorrow morning for a small fee. We just ignored him and walked out.

We arrived at the bus station early the next morning and I started looking around for a bus to Lao Bao. After a couple of different ticket windows, it became clear there was no scheduled public bus. I went back outside to discuss what to do with Sarah and we were approached by a bunch of minibus drivers who wanted to know where we were headed. We said Lao Bao and indicated that we had two bicycles and one driver said he would take us there for 700000 dong (~US$43.75). The cramped, hot minibus was only a few dollars cheaper than the nice tourist bus! I think the main problem Sarah and I have in these situations is that we base our counter-offer on the ridiculous price we were just quoted. We should have offered something like 100000 dong, but instead we offered 500000. Everyone made a show like that was way too cheap and pretended to walk away, but after a few minutes they came back and we got them down to 600000 (~US$37.50). Nice work Team Welle.

We loaded our bicycles into the back and squeezed into the tiny seats we were allotted, thinking we would be on our way. However, instead of leaving, we spent the next hour sitting in the van while the driver’s wife tried to recruit more passengers. Every time we thought the van was full, one more person was squeezed in. The people getting on the bus had one of two reactions to us. They were either amused and stared at us like we are exotic zoo animals, or they were disgusted and frightened by the mere sight of us. One Asian women was so obviously repulsed by us she looked like she might puke. I am sorry to say this, but she herself was the shortest, fattest, and ugliest person on the bus!

We finally hit the road and we had a small panic attack when we had to switch vans and drivers at Dong Ha. We thought we were going to be asked to pay again, but the driver assured us that we needed “no money” and we arrived safely at Lao Bao in the early afternoon.

I think the worst thing about getting ripped off like this is that it makes you suspicious of everyone. When people are truly being friendly or helpful, you keep your guard up and turn down their offers because you don’t want to get conned. Overall though, Vietnam wasn’t nearly as bad as we heard it could be. It seems like everyone has a horror story, but Vietnam is probably our favorite country in southeast Asia so far because of the people, scenery, and food. Maybe that is because we stuck to the highlands or maybe Vietnam just has a poorly-deserved bad reputation.

It’s been a typical past couple of days in the highlands for us. Drinking lots of coffee, cycling short hilly days, and having my arm hair pet by kids at internet cafes. We cycled along Highway 14 stopping at the following cities: Plei Ku, Kon Tum, Dak To, Dak Glei, and Kham Duc. Highway 14 is also known as the Ho Chi Minh Highway because it follows the old Ho Chi Minh Trail. It is a relatively new road and the surface has been great. The terrain has been constantly rolling and today turned into actual mountains for the first time. The weather has been good. It has been hot, but not as unbearable as it is in the lowlands. Up here, we often have a breeze that cools us down and it really makes cycling a lot more pleasant. In the late afternoon, it usually clouds over and threatens to rain, but we rarely get wet.

Coffee plantations dominate the countryside and even the smallest village has several cafes. We start off with a coffee before we set out in the morning and have another with breakfast an hour or two later. The cafes serve weak iced tea to be drunk between sips of the strong coffee so you get a double dose of caffeine! An iced coffee with condensed milk costs 4000VND (~US$0.25) just about everywhere.

Most of the towns and villages on Highway 14 have a rong. A rong is a community meeting hall used by the ethnic minority peoples that inhabit this region of Vietnam.

A rare shot of yours truly.

We saw a couple of these wire bridges that looked like they were tied together by hand. Sarah wanted to walk out on this one, but I told her she would be auditioning for the Darwin Awards. She walked a couple of feet out over the river anyway. What a rebel.

As soon as we left Dak Glei this morning we began climbing and we continued to ascend for about 20 kilometers. Every couple of hundred meters there was a sign indicating the grade was 10%. I think we literally saw a dozen of these. This was the first time in southeast Asia where we’ve really felt like we were in the mountains.

As we climbed, we passed many villagers herding their cattle. There was almost zero vehicular traffic on the road. We got passed by maybe a dozen buses and trucks the entire time.

The views were impressive. Near the road the villagers had planted crops but in the distance it was virgin jungle and high mountain peaks.

North of Plei Ku, hotels have been easy to find. Every 50 kilometers or so there is a decent sized town with food, water, and some sort of place to stay. A room usually costs around $7 for a fan and private bathroom and $10 if you want airconditioning and hot water too. We get a lot of attention in these little towns. The women love to stand next to Sarah and show their friends how they only come up to her shoulder at best. Little boys also seem to be fascinated by my arm hair. There are always groups of them staring at it and every once in a while one gets up enough nerve to stroke it. I haven’t scared anyone with my bushy chest yet though.

Not many people speak English around here, so we use our Rough Guide to order food most of the time. The food is pretty simple. You can get rice, soup, or noodles and your choice of stir-fried meat or vegetables. A meal for two with a couple of Saigon beers costs around US$3-4.

We are a couple of days from crossing into Laos. We are going to ride north to Lao Bao and then cross the border and head west to Savannakhet.

Today was a day that started out tough and ended strangely. I woke up this morning feeling decent, and my diarrhea had firmed up from a liquid actually thinner than water, so we decided to cycle. After checking out of the hotel in Buon Ma Thuot, we were on the road at 6:30am and as soon as we started pedaling, I could tell I was weak. My legs felt dead and I was struggling to keep up with Sarah. It was difficult to concentrate on turning the cranks while at the same time constantly keeping my sphincter on guard against the spasms in bowels.

After a couple of hours of riding, I was feeling better. That could be partly due to the two coffees and one sugarcane juice (with added sugar!) we drank though.

The afternoon went smoothly and was great cycling. I don’t think there was a single stretch of flat ground. We were constantly going up and down over the hills with views of the coffee, wood, and rubber being grown. It seems like the farming has probably made this area more beautiful than it would be if it was untouched jungle. The route was lined with trees to keep us in the shade and a cool breeze prevented us from overheating on the climbs.

We arrived in Ea Drang at 3pm after 82km and slowly cycled through the town looking for a hotel. Before we knew it, we had reached the other edge of town without seeing a single place, and then we heard a voice call out “Hello. Stop for a bit.” Always suckers for perfect English, we swung back in the direction of the voice and found two Vietnamese guys on motorcycles with two hefty Australian women in back. I asked if there was a hotel nearby and one of the guys launched into a diatribe on how there were no hotels for foreigners in this town. Something about the ethnic minorities and their relationship with the government of the north after the war. For some reason, hearing someone speak English extremely well always makes us a little suspicious. It makes the person seem too slick. We bluffed and told him we met some New Zealanders who had stayed in this very town and he said for Kiwis or Australians maybe, but no way for Americans or Russians. Not really wanting to believe him, and remembering that we had specifically asked at the tourist office in Buon Ma Thuot and they said there were hotels, we decided to ask at the hotel across the street. They had the same story though, telling us the nearest hotel was 100 kilometers to the north at Plei Ku. After talking for a bit, we realized we had three options.

1. Search around the town for a hotel where we could stay. This was risky because we might not find anything and we would kill valuable time as there were only about three hours of daylight left.
2. Eat lunch, stock up on supplies, and continue riding looking for a place to set up the tent for the night.
3. Attempt to catch a bus north to Plei Ku.

We decided on a hybrid of 3 and 4. I started looking out for a bus to flag down, while Sarah went into the hotel to ask when the next bus to Plei Ku was. They told her 4:30 (we think), so we decided to eat lunch and stock up on food and water and then wait for the bus until 4:45. If we didn’t have any luck by then, we would start riding.

After lunch, we stood outside keeping our eyes peeled for an approaching bus. I was definitely not feeling confident at this point. I kept imagining the nightmare scenario of being stuck on the road in the dark with no options for camping and hungry, malaria-carrying mosquitos swarming us. I also vaguely remembered reading that this was one of the most heavily mined areas of Vietnam and wasn’t too pleased about that either. As I was staring down at the ground in anguish, I noticed an overturned playing card among the rubble. I told myself, if I turn that card over and it is the queen of hearts, it will be a good sign. I flipped the card over and was surprised. It wasn’t the queen of hearts, but it was close: the king. For a few seconds my heart rose as I pondered whether the king of hearts was actually better than the queen. Then I got a sick feeling in my stomach as I remembered something. Was it true? A quick glance confirmed. Yes, yes it it was.

Read ’em and weep. It was the suicide king!

I quickly alerted Sarah to the portentous news and she told me I was crazy. “You like to take the ignorance-is-bliss approach to life don’t you?”, I asked. “No”, she said, “I’m ready for action. If it comes down to it, I’m ready to break Mr. Safety’s regulations and hitchhike.” My only response was to laugh cynically.

The minutes crawled by. At 4:15 with still no sight of a bus, we decided to flag down the next one no matter where it was going. We were successful in flagging one down, but it wasn’t going to Plei Ku, so that didn’t accomplish much and we were left waiting again. Then out of nowhere at 4:29 a Minibus pulled up with a guy hanging out the window who yelled “Plei Ku city” at us. “Yes,” we exclaimed and we pointed to our bicycles, which he said he would take care of. It didn’t seem like it was going to be possible, but he crammed our bicycles and gear into the back of the bus and we hopped onto the bus which brought the number of occupants to 14.

There are two employees on a minibus. One is the captain and the other is the first officer. The captain plays with your life by passing at high speeds on dangerous curves. At one point, we had three vehicles abreast going the same direction on a narrow, two-lane road. The first officer sits in the back with the passengers and hangs his head out the window to yell at the driver if we we really are about to hit something. He also yells something which sounds like “weeee-weeee” at motorbikes as we pass. We’ve never heard anyone yelling that at us on our bicycles. The other thing the captain does is communicate with the minibuses going in the opposite direction. There seems to be a complex system of hand signals they use consisting of pointing your hands in different directions and shaking your hand in different ways. One of the motions looks like a dance move from Saturday Night Fever. We weren’t able to figure out what they were communicating about though. We definitely got ripped off on the price. We paid 200,000VND (~US$12.5) for the trip and it seemed like the Vietnamese were paying around 50,000VND. There was a heated exchange of money ahead of us and we heard the first officer say “farang” and “xe dap” (bicycle), but that is all we could decipher. Sitting in the back row of the bus behind us were four older women. They were constantly coughing up phlegm and either spitting it on the floor or in plastic baggies which they tossed out the window. We stopped for a toilet-break and they pulled down their pants and squatted right on the side of the road to pee with their asses in plain view. I quickly averted my eyes. I thought these people were known for their modesty! The scenery on the road to Plei Ku was beautiful, maybe even better than the stretch that we had ridden. From the bus the climbs looked higher and longer and in the distance we could see actual mountains. I wish we could have ridden that stretch too.

We arrived in Plei Ku just as the sun was setting. It was too dark to look around so we settled on the first hotel we found for 150000VND (~US$9.40). Better than sleeping out in the jungle!